July 10, 2002

Western Australian researchers surveying the hostile landscapes of Turkmenistan have returned the first new weapons intended for use in Australian graingrowers’ battle with salinity.

Formerly a Soviet state, Turkmenistan is still establishing its international borders and its agriculture is limited to nomadic cattle grazing and oasis centred cotton cropping.

However, Australian researchers, with support from the Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC), have been scouring Turkmenistan’s acidic and saline soils to capture perennial legume germplasm to broaden the management options available to Australian graingrowers threatened by salinity.

"In Australia, perennial legumes rotated with cereal crops are helping absorb moisture from lower in the soil profile and are therefore slowing the rise of saline watertables," said John Howieson, GRDC project supervisor and Director of the Centre for Rhizobium Studies (CRS) at WA’s Murdoch University.

"However, lucerne has been the primary perennial legume used to control recharge and its performance wavers on acidic soils, leaving growers short of options. This is a particular problem in significant parts of Western Australia, Victoria and New South Wales.

"Commonly used legumes in Australia, such as lucerne, come from the Mediterranean basin and there has been limited exploration of alternative sources which could harbour better suited varieties," he said.

With GRDC support, Associate Professor Howieson, in association with international collaborators, therefore launched a global search of comparable environmental systems to find new perennial options for Australian growers.

"Kevin Foster and Peter Skinner of the WA Department of Agriculture have been moving across Turkmenistan in make-shift camps, hunting their own food and enduring 45 degree Celsius heat to accumulate new legume material," he explained.

"They have collected 413 promising legume accessions from 48 sites and, importantly, have already sent back nodule and soil extracts from those sites for sampling at CRS."

Root nodule/soil interactions generate the nitrogen fixation which makes legumes so valuable to farming systems. Examining the Turkmenistan samples will help CRS develop rhizobia inoculants to ensure imported germplasm can perform in Australia.

According to the scientific GRDC Western Regional Panel Member responsible for Sustainable Farming Systems, Robert Belford, these efforts will permit comprehensive evaluations of new germplasm that could empower growers with a range of new recharge management options.

"The project focuses on acid tolerant perennial legume species, Trifolium and Lotus, because they could increase the viability of growers fighting salinity on acidic soils.

"Effectively, the GRDC’s international collaboration efforts help Australian scientists look on the other side of the fence to see if the grass is greener and, if it is, to bring the grass back home," Dr Belford said.